WOW, what a year! We saw highs and low throughout the year and changes that make us grateful for what we have and what is to come! Heres a quick look at the last couple of months and then a review of the year that has passed and a look into the year to come!
2017 decided to close out with some bitter cold that started before Christmas and will continue for a few more weeks for sure. We are not yet reaching the lows that we saw in 1994 or in 2014 & 2015 but we have been below zero several times already in December and the first day of 2018 we hit a low of -10 degrees.
The picture below is of Dad's pasture next door and the little black dots are geese, hundreds of geese! They stopped to enjoy the small amount of open water on the creek, which has now frozen over as well.
It is cold enough that the kids and have what they call the heater vent club...which includes Zeus! They cover up with a blanket and use their feet to hold it up around the heater vent and slowly cook themselves. Zeus figured this out pretty quickly and joined the club shortly after it was formed.
On the days when the kids are not around or are still in bed Zeus has a private heater vent club just for himself! He is not spoiled right?
Zeus was also very excited during Thanksgiving break when two of my great friends, who just happen to be the guys I hunt mushrooms with, come to stay with us for a few days and enjoy some four wheeling, deer hunting, and a Thanksgiving dinner with another great friend of ours. Zeus is not to proud to beg for attention, and, as you can see here, he is very good at getting it!
I was also finally able to upgrade the heaters in the shop and the garage to a vented forced air heater. The ventless heaters I have been using work well but create a lot of water during operation which collects on the walls and windows leading to mold issues. It took almost a week with the new heater running in place of the original to dry everything out like it should be.
I stopped in at Unkefer Equipment the day after Christmas to order a small part and chatted with Greg Unkefer, the salesman I work with and also the son of Homer who started the dealership! We decided to upgrade our tedder for the farm and it is due in any day now. Greg asked me to wait for a second as he had a gift for me. He knows that I am working towards converting all of my hay tools over to Kubota eventually and his present was a Kubota Hay Tools toy set. This has now been added to my collection of Kubota toys....much to the dismay of my son who wanted to immediately open them up and play with them!
One of the guys I work with has a hobby farm that he raises his own steers and pigs to feed his family with. He tries to be as self-sufficient as possible and raises his own corn, which, prior to this year he picked by hand. He is a thrifty fellow and managed to find a Massey Harris one row corn picker for sale. I dug the gravity wagon out of dads shed up home and took it down to Derek's to see if we could get this old picker running. As you can see in the picture, after several hours of scraped knuckled and some choice words, we got it running! We picked a years supply of corn in about 2 hours. I thought this was a great picture showing a very very old piece of equipment being pulled by a very modern piece of equipment!
There ended up being about 11 rows left after he filled his corn crib so I picked it and brought it home with me. Derek keeps telling me that he doesn't shell the corn to feed it, he just throws the whole ear corn into the pigs and they do the shelling for him, and he was spot on! Each day I give the pigs approx. 45 lbs. of whole ear corn as well as another 40 lbs of the cracked corn & oats mix that I have for them. As you can see in the picture below, they ignore the mixed feed and will eat the whole ear corn first. Whole ear corn is 1/4 the cost of the mixed feed and with them having access to the pasture in the summer and the milk we feed them this is all they really need currently for a balanced diet. I have a supplier for whole ear corn and I am considering getting another load when this runs out!
My last major project for 2017 was cleaning the barn before the frigid cold set in. Usually, this was a multi-day project consisting of 50-60 loads of manure with dads small box spreader. At our visit to the Farm Science review this year I found a vertical beater manure spreader that I really liked but was far out of the realistic price range for purchasing right now. However, thru talking with the local dealer I found out that they rent this spreader at an unbelievably reasonable price. So, the plan was set and I picked it up right before Christmas. With my brothers help we cleaned my barn and dad's barn in a what totaled to be about 10 total hrs. and took 19 loads!!!! This thing is a beast!!!!!!!
This thing spreads a beautifully consistent and even pattern that is 30' wide. It took 13 loads to clean my barn 100% including the massive pile I had built up already.
It chewed up every cornstalk, clump, wad of hay, everything, and it layed so beautifully across the fields. If you look closely at the picture above you will see where I spread 6 loads with dad's spreader in this same field earlier this fall. The black spots you see to the left of this spread pattern are the clumps that still remain months after it was spread....and 6 loads only covered the center of one pasture! I was able to evenly cover 10 acres with this spreader and my pastures are now fertilized and ready for spring and there are no clumps!!!! When we come out of the deep freeze I plan to clean the barns again but I will be covering my hay fields with the next round!!!
Now for a review of the year that has passed! We started 2017 nervous about what was to come as my wife was still unemployed at the turn of the year and the farm was struggling to cover its own bills. Through much hard work and proper management, the farm quickly was forced to be efficient, conservative, and we made needed changes to be sure it could cover its own payments. March saw my wife find part-time work which gave her the opportunity to grow professionally again. While this took her away from the farm it has allowed us the luxury of some extra money coming in. Since the farm had already been forced to fend for itself, we are blessed to be able to use this money to finally have and maintain emergency savings and start knocking out some debt!
Spring brought my wife an expanded version of her part-time job that morphed into a full-time position. Spring also brought us a bumper hay crop which provided enough hay to feed all of my cattle for a full year, in just the first cutting! There was actually so much hay that it secured a full year's worth of feed for Sam's cattle as well as enough for us to sell some if demand arises! Spring also brought us a record-setting wet spring that was muddy far beyond what we expected. This lead to us losing several calves to disease because of the mud and generally poor weather conditions.
Summer brought us two more unbelievable cuttings of dry hay that turned out beautiful!!! It also brought us a record number of sales for freezer pork and beef as well as a lot of custom work that was close to home! Summer remained wet, which, while it was great for growing hay, it was horrible for timing of making the hay. The summer also didn't dry up so we fought mud in the pastures all summer long and forced us to make changes to cattle paths across the bottom that needed to be done. The installation of the driveway and cattle paths will pay off huge dividends as we move forward in allowing us to access the pastures even in the wettest of conditions without forcing the cattle to wade thru the mud. This eliminates sickness in newborn calves and allows us to properly rotationally graze our pastures.
Fall was crazy busy and we didn't let off the throttle! Thru working with another friend at work we were able to secure bedding for the winter. The weather cooperated perfectly and, with help from my brother, we were able to get it all home and wrapped before it rained so we have the best bedding we have ever made!
While winter went from warm and wet to extremely cold and frozen, it is a blessing in disguise! The last two years we have barely had enough hay to make it thru the winter and barely made it to green pastures each spring! These mild winters came at just the right time to allow us to make it thru without purchasing feed or having to sell cattle to make it thru. Cold weather like this benefits us in many ways. Due to the cold, the feedlot stays drier and cleaner and the bedding works beautifully with less bedding. When it is this cold the animals will eat almost twice as much hay each day as they would in mild temperatures. We have plenty of hay so that is not a problem for us this year. It also means that demand for hay will increase with each extremely cold day we have so our chances to sell out the bumper crop we made this year get better with every cold day we have!!!
That brings us to today. The last two years were stressful and gave us little room for error in decision making. It has also forced us to complete one of our primary goals, for the farm to pay for itself and begin to pay us back! This one step has a tremendous effect on our future as a family and as a business. These tests have forced us to be flexible and show a willingness to change quickly to keep up with the challenges of the day.
We are gaining momentum as we continue to grow and with each new low comes an opportunity to learn, grow, and change! With each new challenge, we have the opportunity to choose how we are going to respond!
E + R = O
Event + Response = Outcome!
You cannot change the event, it has happened and it is past. However, you can change the outcome by how you respond to the event. That is the beauty of life, you control every aspect of your life by how you choose to respond to each event you experience. Some outcomes are immediate, others may take a lifetime to know the outcome. The point is, we each have the complete control over our life and the world around us by how we choose to respond! With this in mind, we can look back at our response and know that while there have been struggles along the way, we responded in a positive way and the outcome is continuing to be more positive each day!
So this year, as you look upon your pasture and take inventory of what you have, what you need, what you want, and what your goals are, you should do so knowing you are in complete control! You have created your own destiny. If what you see in your pasture is not what you want or need, you are not stuck with it forever. You can change it starting now with how you respond to each challenge that comes to you!
Remember, nothing lasts forever. The bad times will pass and there will be good times and as such the good times will pass and there will be struggles. So, be careful how you respond the next time you face a decision....because at that moment you are shaping your destiny!
Have a wonderful year everyone! It will be everything you make it!
Kenny
